


Hearth, Hot chocolate, Home

by FaiaHae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Family Feels, Found Family, Gen, Hot Chocolate, Team as Family, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-08 01:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17972054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaiaHae/pseuds/FaiaHae
Summary: Barclay's noticed the lodge has been different latelyor: the 5 times barclay makes hot chocolate for the residents of kepler and the 1 time someone makes some for him





	1. The Pine Guard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VigilantShadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigilantShadow/gifts).



Barclay made more hot cocoa for the pine guard then he did for everyone else in the lodge combined. 

 

It felt kind of strange, to be parenting three adults, at least one of which was older then him. But they passed through the lodge in a tornado of coats and mittens and dont-forget-your-hat-Aubrey, youre-gonna-need-your-cane-Ned, jesus-christ-Duck-suspenders-really. And he shoved a thermos in each of their hands and they only sometimes thanked him and then they were off. He had a thermos for each of them, and he wasn’t sure that they noticed the little colored marks on the handles. 

 

Aubrey took a little bit of chili and cinnamon in hers, which had been amusing the first day Ned missed his cup and took a sip of Aubrey’s instead. Barclay had been expecting him to say something, but he’d just made a pained expression and gone back to his own cup. 

 

Ned took his with a teaspoon of rum and a few drops of vanilla extract, and every once in a while Barclay caught him looking into his cup and humming  _ god save the queen _ , and decided maybe it was better that some questions never got answers. 

 

Duck loved white chocolate, but didn’t want to admit it, so Barclay made his with half milk chocolate and half white, and it was almost the same color as the other two. Duck always came back for a refill when he was going between pine-guard shifts and forest-ranger shifts. Duck sometimes forgot to thank him when the others were around, but whenever he wandered back in by himself he paused by the doorway and choked out “thanks, Barclay.” before he left. He always sounded a little choked up. Barclay didn’t understand it until the week Duck’s sister visited, and he brought her by the lodge for cocoa. She’d taken a sip of her cup and exclaimed, wonder in her voice, “Did you find mom’s recipe?” 

 

He swore sometimes that the lobby was a revolving door of one of them or the other coming through, and the people following after them- Indrid looking for Duck, Kirby looking for Ned, some poor soul holding Dr. Harris Bonkers and looking for Aubrey. He tried to have a cup for each of them on hand, too. The first time he gave Indrid a cup of Duck’s cocoa Indrid had looked content the way Barclay hadn’t seen him in years. Kirby didn’t like Ned’s, though it made him laugh when he tried it, so he took Aubrey’s instead. 

 

Barclay had been expecting to get tired of it- new faces for the first time in years, cooking for new people, stocking up extra on ingredients, but he could see something happening. For the first time in years, the lobby was full of humans and sylphs sitting together. Kirby was showing Jake his latest faked abominable snowman footage, Leo came in looking for Duck and got into a spirited debate with Indrid about the market price of eggnog. Moira was drinking tea with an imposing british man who’d come looking for Ned.

 

The place had never felt more like home. 


	2. Jake Coolice

**** If Jake drank less cocoa then the pine guard, it was only by virtue of being harder to pin down. Some days Barclay only saw him out of the corner of his eye, a blur of color and sports equipment, and sometimes his arm would snap out on instinct to grab the back of a winter jacket, like a bear catching fish, and he’d realize that he had grabbed someone other than Jake. If it was a member of the pine-guard, he could usually remember something to bullshit being mad at them over. That went double for Dani. Once, he’d nabbed Stern, and found him with his cheeks and hands full of the chocolate chip cookies he’d  _ just _ put on the cooling rack.

 

They’d looked each other for a solid minute, Stern chewing slowly as though trying to delay the moment he had to acknowledge that he’d been caught. Eventually, he couldn’t put it off any more, gulped, and offered Barclay a cookie.

 

“One free get-out-of-a-parking-ticket pass?”

 

Barclay took it.

  
“Can I use it on someone else?”

 

Stern thought a moment, looking very grave, even with his arms still full of chocolate chip cookie. There was a smear of chocolate on his cheek.

 

“Well, Hollis came to see Jake, and their motorcycle is currently parked illegally.”

 

Barclay sighed and let him go.

 

“Take care of that and we’re even.”

  
  
  


It only occurred to him well after to wonder why Stern  _ knew that. _

 

He got his answer when Jake sprinted through, nabbing a cup of cocoa off the counter and  _ shoving _ a cookie into the thermos before he went full-tilt out the back door.

 

Barclay couldn’t bring himself to be mad. 

 

Jake drank anything warm, but he preferred the biggest marshmallows Barclay had on hand in his hot chocolate, and was extra happy when Barclay had time to make them homemade. Without fail and without summons, he would show up just as Barclay was getting started to help- radiating the cold from the slopes off him in waves as he shed layers of coats on the table and dumped his shoes in the corner. He’d wrap his hands around his thermos for a while, jumping from foot to foot till he could feel his fingers, and then roll up his sleeves and make grabby hands until Barclay passed him the bowl. 

 

They’d work in silence, or to the soft homey hum of Barclay’s old disc player, and Barclay pretended he didn’t see Jake pour peppermint extract into the marshmallows, and always tossed in a fistful of sprinkles whenever Jake’s back was turned. They always came out a colorful mess, but Jake laughed the way he used to, back home, and Barclay didn’t mind a bit.

 

He always forced him to help with the cleanup before he could eat the marshmallows, anyway.

 

He’d mentally dubbed them  _ Jake’s Marshmallows _ and he hardly gave them to anyone else, except to Hollis, and sometimes to Keith when the kid looked extra beat-down. Dani stole them out of the cabinets anyway, but it was the principle of the thing. When he made the cocoa for Jake he added extra whipped cream on top, and a handful of smashed peppermint from whoever had last tried to make a gingerbread house, and half the time half the whipped cream ended up smeared on Jake’s nose and on his goggles.

 

Barclay remembered Jake coming through the gate, new to his human disguise. He’d held himself, shivering violently even in the lighter fall chill. Barclay had made him hot chocolate and Mama had knit him a sweater, and they’d sent him to the local high school and hoped for the best. He’d brought Hollis back to the lodge a few days later, and by the time the first snow fell Jake was out there in it, taking it in, at home in a world he’d had no choice in. 

 

It had taken Barclay a few years, he reflected, to find that same comfort he saw in Jake’s face when he’d come back home out of the snow that first winter. But here they were.

  
He hummed to himself, opened the cabinet, and found  _ absolutely all of the marshmallows missing.  _


	3. Thacker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is just fucking sad. it's just sad. I'd like to say Hopeful ending? but like. uh. it's a little thing against how fucking sad this is. 
> 
> back to fluff next chapter

 

Barclay thought maybe he was self-sabotaging, because the more the lodge felt homier, the more he thought about when it used to feel like this. He’d turn around and instead of Aubrey he’d expect to see Mike, or Thacker at the table reading the shitty tabloids. He’d fucked up and called Mama “Mary” instead, and Mary had been dead for a long time. Longer then Thacker had been gone. 

 

He really ought to let go.

 

Instead, he was pulling a box of instant cocoa out from the very back of the cabinet. He opened the box, and for a moment the puff of air smelled like pine needles and sap. Thacker used to bring in the firewood after Mama finished chopping it, tottering along and complaining about splinters in his writing hands.

 

In Barclay’s mind’s eye, Thacker’s wearing his glasses, his eyes gleaming with laughter even as he fakes a scowl. “I’ll get a splinter and then what good will I be, huh?”

 

Barclay thumbs the cardboard flap on the box to steady himself, takes out a single packet and buries it back in the cabinet where he knows Mama won’t find it accidentally. 

 

It’s ironic, he thinks as he makes the cocoa. He thought he’d let go. Mama was the one willing to go charging off into a place she’d hardly even seen to save Thacker. 

 

She hadn’t asked for help. Barclay isn’t sure if he would have agreed.

 

Barclay made the cocoa with milk, feeling an old prickle of instinctive defiance.  _ Come on Barclay.  _ Thacker’s ghost was laughing at his shoulder.  _ Water’s good enough for me. _ In his memories, he called him a heathen, or yelled, or dumped the cocoa over his head. A waste of perfectly good cocoa.  _ Oh is instant perfectly good cocoa now? Can I get that on the record? _

 

Grief hit him like a tidal wave, and for a moment he thought it would level him. He felt like it would rip out his foundations and whoever came in the kitchen next would find him on the ground, sobbing like the night of Mike’s funeral, or Mary’s, or-

 

He gripped the counter, breathed, and picked up the cup.

 

He crossed the lobby, feeling someone looking at him but not paying it any mind. He kept his chin up, went out the door and down to the cellar. 

 

The thing that was Thacker once was placid, and Barclay got pretty close before it looked up at him. It’s eyes were big and empty and nothing like the warm spark of intellect he remembered, but he put the cocoa down in arms reach, slid it a little closer carefully, and left. 

 

When he went down again a few hours later, in search of something in the library for Aubrey, the cup was empty.

  
  



	4. Dani

Barclay loved Dani like the daughter he was too gay to have, but one of these days, he was gonna have to kill her. 

It was, he reflected, a good thing that he’d figured out how to make Dani’s hot chocolate perfectly and without telling her what was in it, because without it he had a feeling she’d slip into being fully nocturnal. 

 

Well, except on Saturdays, when she was lucid and on the couch for Saturday Night Dead, without fail. Lately, Aubrey had been good for her, and Dani was awake for  _ lunch _ sometimes now. Barclay used to count it a success if Dani made it to dinner.

 

Still, Dani awake at reasonable hours meant Dani with more time to get into mischief, and this was the  _ third time this week _ all his marshmallows had disappeared from the cabinet. Barclay knew, on some level, that this was her way of making Jake spend more time with him, since Jake had been a bit down lately, but  _ honestly _ , Leo only stocked so much gelatin. So he decided to kill two birds with one stone, and went to go get Jake around noon.

 

He threw open the door, was relieved to find Jake’s bed empty, and announced with the appropriate degree of drama:

 

“Get your pants on, we’re raiding Dani’s room.”

 

“Are you sure that’s a good-”

 

“Pants, Jake.”

 

“...okay.”

 

____

 

Barclay worked his way around the outside of the lodge to Dani’s window. Her curtains were closed, but she was a deep sleeper and her bed was against the opposite wall. She was probably keeping the marshmallows in her cabinet, which was under the window, or the bookshelf against the wall. Barclay waved Jake over and pointed at the window latch. Jake tried to feign confusion, and Barclay rolled his eyes.

 

_ “I know Ned taught you how to lockpick. _ ” 

 

Jake grinned, guilty, and picked the lock. Slowly but surely Barclay opened the window, pulled open the curtains, and was on top of the dresser when he glanced over at the bed and promptly  _ fell off. _

 

At the sound of a  _ full grown man _ hitting the ground, Aubrey- who was completely naked next to Dani in bed- shot up.

 

“What the Fu-” Barclay’s head hurt, badly, but he’d landed next to the shelf on the dresser where Dani had stashed the marshmallows. They were hanging above his head. He grabbed them, rolled to his feet, and sprinted full-tilt out the door. 

 

“BARCLAY!”

 

Dani’s voice carried after him, and he knew she’d be out of bed in another minute,  _ maybe _ with clothes on he was lucky (on one memorable occasion she’d pulled the old ‘handful of shaving cream’ and Jake had  _ not _ bothered to get dressed before he went tearing out of his room after her). He bolted into the hallway and nearly knocked Stern flat on his ass as he ran out.

 

“Wh-”

 

“Hide me.”

 

Barclay regretted that about a  _ second _ after it left his mouth, but it only hung in the air a moment, too little time to think to take it back before Stern grabbed him by the hand and pulled him into his room. He shut the door behind them, soft enough that even Barclay didn’t hear the click. They held their breath.

 

Barclay heard Dani go thundering down the hallway, and then Aubrey a second later yelling  _ “BABE, PANTS!” _

 

Then the noise intensified from the lobby, including the sound of Mama yelling “ _ THIS IS A PLACE OF BUSINESS DANI” _

 

He couldn’t help but snicker, and was surprised by Stern  _ giggling _ . They looked at each other for a moment. 

 

Stern  _ wheezed,  _ and the sight of Stern still in his suit with his hand over his mouth trying not to laugh utterly undid him. He slid down against the door, laughing too hard to stay standing. Next to him, Stern gave up and laughed too, and it was a clear, bright sound, and Barclay’s chest twisted a bit.

 

Barclay didn’t have any time to deal with the thought that had half crossed his mind before Dani was pounding at the door.

 

“BARCLAY! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!”

 

Barclay grinned and mouthed “busted.” Stern put a finger to his lips and pointed to the window. 

  
  


By the time Dani picked the lock and got into the room it was empty, and when she went by the kitchen later in the day there was a cup of her hot chocolate on the counter, white chocolate and raspberry, exactly two marshmallows in the cup. 


	5. Mama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mind the pairing tags! (Mama x Juno)

Barclay made Mama’s hot cocoa with chili and cinnamon, and brought it to her exactly once a day, Eight in the morning, like clockwork. Only, when he knocked on Mama’s door at eight on a morning that should have been like any other, it wasn’t Mama who opened it. It was Juno Divine, sleep-bleary and wearing mama’s duster pulled around herself like it was a bathrobe. Barclay wasn’t entirely convinced she was wearing anything  _ else.  _

 

They blinked at each other, Juno seeming to register that she’d done something worthy of note. She cleared her throat.

 

“Is, uh. Is that for...Madeline?”

 

“Oh god.”  _ That _ was Mama’s voice, coming from somewhere beyond the door. “Is that Barclay?”

 

Juno looked uncomfortable, and Barclay realized that even though he knew Juno from Duck’s stories (and the occasional bad home video of ranger PSAs), Juno didn’t know him.

 

“Yes, Mama. I brought your hot chocolate?”

 

“Swell.” Mama grunted.   
  


Barclay could see Juno silently mouthing ‘ _ Mama?’ _ and didn’t envy either of them  _ that  _ conversation. He held the thermos of cocoa out to Juno, who took it automatically, and then turned on his heel and went back to the lobby to sit down and contemplate the universe for a bit. 

 

__

 

The next time Juno answered Mama’s door Barclay was prepared. He’d talked to Duck (who had laughed himself hoarse the minute he picked up the phone, and had to have heard about it from Juno) about what Juno’s preferences in sweets (and alcohol, because she’d left mama’s room after that conversation looking confused and vaguely panicked. Barclay sort of knew what it was like to date someone and then find out they had  _ one _ kid, finding out that they parented a whole lodge’s worth of young adults including some people the same age may have been...a lot.)

 

So Juno answered the door, blessedly wearing pants this time (and a shirt, but it was one of mama’s paint splattered throw shirts and that still introduced thoughts that Barclay didn’t want to be having.) He pushed her mug into her hands.

 

“Try this.”

 

Juno eyed him for a moment, like she half-suspected he was going to poison her, but ultimately caution lost out, and she took a long swig. And then immediately took another one.

 

Barclay tried not to laugh out loud as Juno stood in the doorway and chugged the entire mug, but he couldn’t keep back a snicker when she lowered it again and there was a smear of whipped cream on her lip.

  
“Hand this off to Mama and i’ll get you another cup.”

 

He handed her Mama’s mug and turned, fully prepared to come right back, but he heard the words “ _ let me take care of that for you” _ and decided to....give it an hour.

 

He made another mug of salted caramel hot chocolate, added a shot of baileys, topped it with whipped cream and just went ahead and put it next to the door. 


	6. +1: Stern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mind the ship tags, as always. This owes a lot to a lovely commish I got from Artlyloser here https://artlyloser.tumblr.com/post/183265729729/commission-or-callingcardinal-of-stern-and (I can't hyperlink)

Barclay was tired down to his bones. 

 

He loved the lodge, and he loved what was....well, functionally his job. Legally his job, he supposed. Still, people who managed lodges, cooked for 20 people, changed sheets, and made cocoa usually had  _ help. _ Mama was out doing the work that kept the lodge open, and also the work that kept the residents of Kepler living. 

 

Dani and Jake helped where they could, but they had hobbies, things to do, places to explore, and he would never begrudge them that. It was nice to be young in a world where that was a blessing and not a curse. To have a home you chose rather then one you were trapped in. No more walls.

 

He tried not to let the walls of the lodge bother him, but being in the kitchen from sun-up to sundown was exhausting. Exhausting enough that when he sat down for a minute to get off his feet between cleaning up after lunch and starting dinner, he fell asleep in the chair.

 

Not his proudest moment.

 

He came to slowly, with the warm smell of spices and tomato sauce in his nose, and for half a minute thought he’d started dinner in his sleep. But no, he was still in the chair, and something...something smelled like....

 

He opened his eyes.

Underneath the smell of tomato sauce and basil was the faint smell of pine needles, coming from a blanket that was draped around his shoulders. There was a cup of hot cocoa in one of the lodge’s solid green ceramic mugs, and when he drank it, it tasted like vanilla bean and cinnamon.

 

There was the soft scuff of a metal pan on granite behind him, not loud enough to be startling, fitting into the ambiance like it hadn’t broken the silence so much as fallen into it, like waves on a shore. He twisted in his seat to look behind him.

 

Stern.

 

Barclay blinked a moment, almost sure he was mistaken. But no, that was certainly Agent Stern, wearing what had to be the only unadorned apron they had in the kitchen. It was light pink, and clean, and Stern was bent over the stove, dividing his attention between two pots and a bowl of something sweeter-looking next to him. When Barclay moved, the chair scuffed the ground, and Stern turned.

 

Barclay was half expected Stern to look embarrassed or self-conscious, standing in the lodge kitchen without his suit jacket, still wearing his tie under his pink apron. He smiled, and Barclay registered in a slight daze that there was flour on his cheek.

 

“Good afternoon, sleepyhead.”

 

Barclay wondered if this was some kind of elaborate domestic fantasy dream, and if so, why it was Stern in the kitchen and not coming through the door in a suit with some  _ honey-i’m-home _ line. And then he registered that that was a mental image he’d had more then once, and pushed it away.

 

“Um.” he said, eloquently.

 

Stern’s grin got a little more playful.

 

“You seemed a bit preoccupied, so I thought I’d get started on dinner for you.”

 

“Thanks. I mean, uh. I did? You could have just woken- I mean, you can cook?”

 

Barclay wanted to bang his head on the table. Smooth. Real smooth. Stern just shrugged, picking up the bowl of what Barclay thought was cookie better off of the counter and trying to stir it with a spoon. 

 

“My father was Italian, it was kind of-” the spoon got stuck. Stern frowned. “-required.”

 

Barclay tried to suppress a smile, and failing that, huffed out an exaggerated sigh, getting out of his chair.

 

“And he didn’t show you what to do with cookie dough?”

 

“-He was for more  _ traditional dishes. _ ”

 

Barclay plucked the bowl from Stern’s hands, taking the spoon from him.

 

“This is ready to roll out. Why don’t you get back to your pasta?”

 

Stern  _ pouted _ , and Barclay couldn’t help a laugh.

 

“Come on, you’ve gotten me, what, 2 hours off? Let me do  _ something _ or I’m gonna start thinking you’re trying to replace me.”

 

“No one could replace you.”

 

Stern’s tone was fond, and it was a shock, Barclay stopping halfway to the counter. He turned on his heel, looking back over at Stern.

 

Stern was  _ bright red _ , and as Barclay met his eyes he coughed, realized at the last moment he shouldn’t cough over his pasta and pulled his apron up around his mouth, seemed to rethink that too. The result was a half flail that made Stern look like a teenager with no idea where to put his hands. Barclay’s heart twisted in his chest, and he spoke before he could think it through.

 

“Are you still here to kill bigfoot?”

 

They both stopped dead, neither having expected Barclay to say that. He put the bowl on the counter and wracked his brain for something else to say, but Stern cut in again, thoughtfully tapping a finger on the edge of the counter.

 

“This was an intel mission. The thing about threats no one believes in is that they’re not well documented. If bigfoot had been here, was the same entity that killed 13 people across the coast...yes. That....would have been my purpose.”

 

Barclay picked out a few words of that and raised an eyebrow.

 

“Would have been?”

 

Stern smiled, looking a bit self deprecating.

 

“Well, if i’m honest, I got a bit tired of UP sending me after ghost stories when there were...animal bodies in the woods, big unnatural trees, disturbed land and mysterious sinkholes. Something’s happening here, and it isn’t bigfoot. UP didn’t care about what it is, so I....well. I quit.”

 

Barclay blinked.

 

“You  _ quit? _ ”

 

Stern raised an eyebrow, stirring the pasta sauce.

 

“Is that really so hard to believe?”

 

“I- well- I mean- suit!” Barclay had the sudden nearly inescapable urge to go lie down a snow drift as he registered the words leaving his mouth. Damn it damn it damn-

 

Stern laughed, loud and clear and just as beautiful as the first time he’d heard it. 

 

“I suppose I just got used to it. Honestly, it might be all the clothes I have? I haven’t gotten anything mailed here yet, given that I...don’t exactly live here.”

 

He looked embarrassed again, stirring at the pasta.

 

“I’m not exactly welcome here.”

 

“That’s not true.”

 

Barclay didn’t know it was true until he said it, but once he did, it felt right. Stern had been conspiring with Jake, and he’d seen Dani sit next to him on the couch to ask his opinion on some particular detail in her paintings. (The fact that Stern always blushed at whatever Dani was showing him aside. Actually, the fact that she was messing with him was even more proof.)

 

“You know-.” Barclay stopped. He felt like he was on the edge of a cliff. He was taking a leap of faith, and didn’t know if anyone was going to catch him.

 

Mama would be furious.

 

“...most of the residents here are long term. You could stay.”

 

Stern half-smiled, bittersweet.

 

“Would you want me to stay?”

 

Barclay took a step closer to him, thought about stolen cookies and shared laughter.

  
“Yes.”

 

Barclay wasn’t sure when Stern moved, but all of a sudden he was in his arms, and Stern’s hands were on his cheeks, and Stern tasted like hot chocolate.

 

Like home. 


End file.
